Recap

Entities…

Entities are the service users in your model.

Entities arrive and move through your system…

Entities go off and do different things in our model…

Generators…

Generators bring entities into being.

We might have multiple generators for different kinds of patients, if they arrive at different rates.

Example of patients arriving via ambulance and via walk-in, with clearly different arrival rates

Sinks

Example of multi-step mostly linear pathway, with patients having the possibility of leaving at multiple steps

Activities and Resources

*Example of simple one-step

Queues

FIFO Queues

Priority-based Queue

Reneging

Balking

Jockeying

What-if Scenarios

The Power of Questions

The Code

Running the Code

Web App Interfaces

An Example Interface

Outputs from Models

Metrics

Talk about the importance of defining your measurable metrics

Exercise: The DES Playground

You’re now going to have a go with an interactive app.

In the app, you are running a hospital.

You usually have 24 rooms available, which are divided between

With 24 rooms, your system is coping.

Due to building work, you are temporarily going to have 20 rooms available.

You need to reallocate the number of rooms available to different steps of the pathway - but is it possible to keep the hospital running smoothly still?

  1. Run the simulation with the default parameters

  2. Change some parameters

Exercise: Design your own Discrete Event Simulation + Interface

Could get them using something like draw.io or Excalidraw?

Choose a system to model from a couple of suggestions (choose some things that are quite simple), or do one of their own systems from their post-it notes earlier.